Forecast

Project to turn around busy intersection on Stamford’s West Side

By Angela Carella| on
September 12, 2018

The City of Stamford is fast-tracking a big project for the reconstruction of the intersection of West Main Street and West Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut. Motorists navigate the main choke point, photograph on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018, for traffic along the Post Road corridor.

The City of Stamford is fast-tracking a big project for the reconstruction of the intersection of West Main Street and West Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut. Motorists navigate the main choke point, photograph

The City of Stamford is fast-tracking a big project for the reconstruction of the intersection of West Main Street and West Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut. Motorists navigate the main choke point, photograph on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2018, for traffic along the Post Road corridor.

The City of Stamford is fast-tracking a big project for the reconstruction of the intersection of West Main Street and West Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut. Motorists navigate the main choke point, photograph

STAMFORD - Motorists who find themselves at West Main Street and West Avenue may wonder how an intersection that busy can be that bad.

West Avenue takes your car into a deep dip that can scrape your front bumper as you cross West Main Street.

If you’re on West Main and want to turn onto West Avenue, you can spend much longer than you’d like waiting for a break in oncoming traffic. Though the street is U.S. Route 1, at that spot it’s down to one lane in each direction — no turn lanes.

So, even if you want to continue straight on West Main, you may be stuck while a car up ahead waits for an opportunity to turn.

It’s been that way for decades, but not for much longer.

City officials will announce Thursday that the intersection is about to be reconstructed in a yearlong project that will cost $2.7 million.

It will be widened. State-of-the-art traffic and pedestrian signals will be installed. New sidewalks will be built. Then the whole thing will be milled, repaved and re-marked so motorists will know what’s what.

“We have had an intersection that the city has recognized as challenging for a very long time,” Transportation Bureau Chief Jim Travers said Wednesday. “This is the worst intersection on that side of the city. It has the most congestion, and we can vastly improve it.”

The project “will bring normalcy” to the intersection, Travers said. It will create dedicated left-turn lanes on all four approaches. Pavement markings will provide clear direction for drivers.

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Most of the money comes from a state transportation grant. The rest is from the developer that last year built a Home Depot store on West Main, not far from the intersection. The Zoning Board required that the developer contribute $500,000 toward intersection upgrades.

That money was used to acquire land from three commercial property owners and the owner of an apartment building so the West Main/West Avenue intersection can be made wider, Travers said. Some of the money was used to improve the nearby intersection of West Main Street and Harvard Avenue, he said.

“This was a public-private partnership where we see developers contributing to the improvement of traffic flow,” Travers said.

The project at West Main Street and West Avenue “is significant, and surely one of the most complex ones that we’re planning, because we’re not shutting down the intersection to do it,” Travers said.

The contractor that won the bid, NJR Construction, was given an incentive to work in winter - an attempt to see that the project is finished in a year, Travers said.

“We want to do what’s least disruptive,” he said. “This is a rough intersection.”

It’s one of several projects planned or already in the works for the West Side. The densely populated neighborhood — bordered by Interstate 95, downtown, Hubbard Heights, and the Greenwich line — is due for some much-needed road repair, Travers said.

Two West Side thoroughfares are set to be milled and repaved, he said. Work on Broad Street will begin in a few weeks, and Stillwater Avenue is on schedule for spring.

Travers said he is searching for funding to carry out traffic recommendations for the West Side that were drawn long before he took his job 18 months ago.

“I’m working with city representatives to bring to fruition the plans that were set forth in 2009, 2013, 2015,” he said. “The studies were done with a lot of community involvement, so we would like to execute them.”

The 2015 West Side Transportation Study, for example, recommends reworking the unusual configuration of Boxer Square, at Stillwater Avenue and Smith Street, to reduce motorist confusion, improve safety for walkers and bicyclists, and just make it look better.

It found that Broad Street needs work between Stillwater and Merrell avenues. Left turns should be smoother, crossing Stillwater should be easier for pedestrians, and measures must be taken to reduce speeding, the study concluded.

It also identified another intersection for reconfiguring. Smith and Mill River streets should be designed to create a better gateway between downtown and the West Side, it said. It set forth ways to slow traffic on Mill River Street and make the area safer for pedestrians.

The study listed several intersections along West Main Street that need to be safer for all the people who walk there, and it recommended that one-way Smith Street be returned to two-way to improve connection to the West Side.

Another gateway, West Broad Street at Mill River Street - near residential and retail properties - creates driver confusion, the study found, and data shows too many crashes.

Time to get to work, Travers said.

“Things have been on the books for a while,” he said. “Now we’re getting some of them done.”